thousands of gallons of milk being dumped on dairy farms across Wisconsin. Restaurants close. We lost 50% of Earth seals over farmers air, taking big steps in rice country to beat the Corona virus closer to having to make that gut wrenching decision to euthanize some of their hogs. This is economically devastating as well as emotionally devastating a lot of farmers. The reason why we wanted to tell this story to begin with was because the pork producing industry is a very big industry in in Nebraska this whole idea pork production that we have the United States today. So finally tuned that if there isn't any like disruption, and there it backs up everything. And when port parking plant started to shut down, there was a backup of I think they were estimated 150,000 hogs and day couldn't go to slaughter, so that creates quite a backup. Well, what happens to those pigs? Will These producers on these farms are not finding a market to take their talks to Some people are in dire straits. They have no place to go the animals, and they've got to use a nice either The full grown market animal where they got to use a nice the baby pigs coming in these armors. They've got to make a decision on whether to either slaughter the whole just euthanize. That's a lot of money that they have invested in those things or to slaughter up there. Kind of like they're little piglets. That's their money. That's their investment as it's going up. So if they slaughter off piglets, then they will have a gap in their revenue source. So it's a tough decision when you run out of room and you don't have a place to put them. There's an extreme frustration there that you could hear from these these farmers, as they're conveying some of their stories about, you know, uh, their situation. There's there's this feeling like I hate This is what we do. This is our job is to feed the nation. We've got the supply here, but we can't get it to those people that need it. We've probably got maybe 23 weeks tops before we have start making these tough decisions. Some of these guys have 405 100,000 hogs that they have to go to market right now, some people think we're gonna shut it off. Well, that doesn't work in the farming business. You can't just turn to switch off. And because you've got these little piglets coming along, you know, eventually if you had more time, they could slow down their production. Absolutely. You know, and they've done that before. They can't just turn this thing off and then continue to stay in business. Once things get better. Industry is the holes in dire straits. We need some type of about grants or loans or even indemnification payments. If you have Teoh euthanizing animals report in the street there, there, they've got plans. Case of this mass slaughter. Luckily, I talked to the Nebraska Pork Producers Association representative. They said, Luckily, many of packing plants have been able to get online or partially online. This other issue compounding on this is that a lot of these farmers, also our grain farmers as well We've had three years of bad prices and kind of our economic times for some of these farmers because we had bloods. Recently, we've had severe weather. We've had prices for grains that have gone down. It's a very difficult situation, putting a lot of emotional stress on these producers as well, and you could just hear in their voices. You know that that they don't want to be armor that loses their 50 100 year arm that goes underneath. But they're worried that this might happen, you know, because they can't rebound of it. The other thing they really are concerned about is having to waste, you know, to kill their life stock, you know, needlessly and go to waste, especially when they see empty grocery shelves, the high priced for pain, the food lines that you're seeing, how much or even have to pay for our food in the future when all of this thing starts to break loose, because we're going to have probably some shortages. That's why this is such that it is really a huge issue for everybody out there, and people should be paying attention to it. They are dumping all of their milk every day now for the rest of the week. That's £2400 producing about 1/4 £1,000,000 of milk every day. Ford down the drain. I think customers knew that they couldn't find milk that they normally would in the stores. But I don't think the customers knew that there was this storm brewing with dairy farmers, especially in Wisconsin, until we started reporting about it. We've never seen anything like this. They're extremely stressed. A lot of people assumed correctly that it was because so many people were rushing to the stores buying all those products. They didn't realize that there was actually a surplus of dairy products and that the farmers were actually dumping their milk. At Thes Wisconsin Dairy farms in Wisconsin, about 90% of the milk that's produced on farms ends up on a truck and moves to a cheese plant they have seen with the closure of hundreds of thousands of restaurants in schools and universities and destinations. But food service market will feed people through those channels, is put on pause around the country. You know, Wisconsin as kind of like a cheese state. We have so much cheese here, and I think that's where all of the milk comes into play. In the end, these farmers didn't have all that time to wait. They just had to do something right then and there, and that was to dump the milk. It's delicious nutritious milk. This would have been on a store shelf 24 hours from now. Um, but it's not. It's a heartbreaking thing for that farmer and for so many other dairy farmers, because that is just it's it's quality product that they worked really hard to produce, that they're just throwing away. We're putting all this work into it. All this pride all this time, and we're just dumping it down. The Dream. Ryan L. B. From Golden E Dairy Farm in West Bend, Wisconsin He says that they, at the start of the month started shipping the milk out again, and at this point, they're not dumping any more Milk Hunger Task Force and its donors to the rescue. The organization is now committing $1 million for its new Wisconsin dairy recovery program. So far, everything's being shipped, so I'm sure he's pretty thankful for that. It was a win win win for everybody. It's a win for the farmers when they finally get paid for their milk. It's a win for the producer who is battling the milk and putting people to work as well as just six people who are driving around, and it's a win for hungry people, There is a lot less going into food service in restaurants. I'm in touch with a lot of different industries here, one of them being the rights commission. California Rights Commission represents hundreds of growers across the state, and they had mentioned that their farmers were doing something that was kind of different and unique and using techniques that ahead of the curve and used social distancing out in the field naturally, if you will. Once you get inside the tractor for disinfectant, start with steering wheel on the tractor, all the facets of the tractor from the steps that get into the into the cab, the whole wheel, all of the parts and components of the tractor. They took a lot of time rigorous minutes to wipe those things down. In addition, they do a social distancing thing where only one farmer is assigned to one tractor going from field to field. Or if somebody doesn't show up that day. But now you know it's looking like this is gonna be the new normal. Farmers are feeling very much integral part of the economy and of the American economic fabric farmers, farm labourers, their essential it's tryingto keep everybody safe and healthy so we can keep them employed. Number one as an essential business and number two get our rice crop planted. But what's interesting also is that their market has diminished dramatically because a lot of their rice goes to sushi restaurants in California and elsewhere. And because a lot of those restaurants have been closed down, they don't have a marketplace for back. The other part of it is that if they supply rice for schools, schools have been closed down as well, so it made a very big dent on their economic bottom line. California rice contributes more than $5 billion to our economy each year and 25,000 jobs. We also are home to millions of birds, and the environmental benefits are valued well into the billions of dollars as well. So they're hoping that in September will be able to harvest. They're banking on the fact that by that time things will loosen up a little bit. Things will, you know when they harvest, be able to actually go to market in a much more diverse and widespread geographic area by September, a lot different than they do now way see the end product when it comes home and we're eating it and enjoying it. You don't always think about how it got there. Seeing how it's made, how it's drone and how it's harvested is always sort of an eye opener for me and the dedication and the love of the land that people have there. It's just a lot to milk goats in the morning and make products somewhere in between milk goats at night and then some point during the day. Pack like 15 orders to go out. The dairy industry is huge in Vermont. That's one of the things that were known for besides maple syrup. Their entire production line changed in the matter of 24 hours. Once stay at home, order started really setting in, and restaurants started really closing down. Their day to day operations look very, very different now. They were of work. We've been selling over our website for probably 10 to 15 years. Blue Ledge Farm has been around for more than 20 years. They have an established website, but the online orders were dead or something that they ever focused on. It was never focused, not just because they didn't want to, but because there wasn't really need, for there are only getting a couple orders the week or a couple hours a month. And so they were mostly distributing to restaurants in the area. She really is relying on these online sales to get them through this time of not being so busy on their distribution end. She was recruiting help from her teenage kids while they were out of school, so they would you know you some homework throughout the day. But they would be helping her package the cheese up sis actions, finishing up her high school career. He loves tracking him like a little present. Dame goes for Ice House. They are shipping out a ton way more sales, and they thought they would have. And now that farmers markets are open in a limited capacity, I think they're starting to balance out the in person sales versus online sales. But I think they're still is definitely a focus on the online sales. For both of them, he's been sitting. They are still a small scale farm they're still trying to develop, but this really pushed them. Maybe two years into the future, But they also have to think about how can I ship this and packaging all of those different orders. Up throughout the day, one of the farmers was saying that she had gotten maybe one or two online orders a week before this, or maybe even a month before this on it all of a sudden was 40 to 50 orders, and that's a huge production change for them. It's more like the squeaky wheel gets the grease kind. Uh, once I was just squeaking about enough. It's been good to force us into some things that we wanted to do, but we're low on the totem pole. So as difficult as this time is for a lot of these farms. And like I said, the amount of work that they're taking on is incredible. You know, they're also trying to find a silver lining, a swell of saying, Hey, we never got to focus on our website before he had a plan to do this maybe a couple years down the line. But we can do this right now, Blue allege, actually has its own farm stand. I mentioned in the story and they said that they've been getting a lot of business from there as well, where people could just drive up. And it's an honor system where you can pick up whatever you want from their stand and you just put money in a bucket or an envelope or something, and then you can leave. So it's a no contact business similar to online, where you're not in contact with anybody. But that one, at least isn't person. And so it was a really nice reminder for her of why she got into the business to begin with. And she thinks that will change the future of their business. She thinks their business will steer more locally instead of the big distribution like they were originally thinking about. We kind of had lost touch with that a little bit that direct consumer relationship, and it's been really nice to be reminded of that

With restaurants, schools and food processing plants closed, farmers have had to resort to drastic measures: turning to online sales, dumping millions of gallons of milk and even euthanizing hogs.Watch the video above for four stories from farmers across the country.We are living in unprecedented times, and as COVID-19 spreads across the nation and world, the stories about how people are coping, battling, and persevering through the outbreak have become more important than ever. Each week, “Field Notes” brings you a handful of stories about how coronavirus has impacted real people just like you, and you can hear more about what it’s like to cover the novel coronavirus from the local news teams that are committed to keeping you informed, no matter what.

With restaurants, schools and food processing plants closed, farmers have had to resort to drastic measures: turning to online sales, dumping millions of gallons of milk and even euthanizing hogs.

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Watch the video above for four stories from farmers across the country.

We are living in unprecedented times, and as COVID-19 spreads across the nation and world, the stories about how people are coping, battling, and persevering through the outbreak have become more important than ever. Each week, “Field Notes” brings you a handful of stories about how coronavirus has impacted real people just like you, and you can hear more about what it’s like to cover the novel coronavirus from the local news teams that are committed to keeping you informed, no matter what.